[2] The story revolves around three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Helen, and Tibby), whose cultural pursuits have much in common with the Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, an impoverished young couple from a lower-class background.

Helen appears at the wedding of Evie Wilcox with Leonard and Jacky, who are now married and in dire financial straits because of Henry's thoughtless advice.

"[3] Critics have described Howards End as a "Condition-of-England novel" for its depiction of the poverty and precarity of the Bast family as well as the rapid changes in the social and economic structure of England in the Edwardian period.

"[7] It sits in the countryside, away from London, holding immense sentimental value to Mrs Ruth Wilcox, who threatens the male line of inheritance when she attempts to leave the house to newly befriended Margaret Schlegel upon her death.

In the end, the three families are forced into a form of uneasy reconciliation; critic Barbara Morden argues:"Ultimately, it is Leonard Bast, the uprooted and dispossessed peasant, who proves to be the key to the novel's pattern of connection and theme of inheritance.

It is his and Helen's illegitimate baby, a child of nature rather than a 'Son of Empire', born at the heart of the old house into a newly constituted family, who will inherit Howards End, perhaps England.

The letter was written in response to two compulsory purchase orders made by the Stevenage Development Corporation; it expressed the hope that 200 acres of the countryside around the house could be preserved both as one of the last beauty spots within 30 miles of London and "because it is the Forster country of Howards End.

[16][17] In the novel, Wickham Place, the London home of the Schlegel sisters, was demolished to make way for a block of flats; it did not have a direct real-world counterpart.

Forster's conception of it owed a great deal to number 1 All Souls Place, where the sisters of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson lived.

[20] A stage adaptation by Lance Sieveking and Cottrell, was performed in 1967 on tour and at the New Theatre in London, with Gwen Watford, Gemma Jones, Michael Goodliffe, Joyce Carey and Andrew Ray in the cast.

The Inheritance is a play in two parts by Matthew Lopez, which gets inspiration from the Forster novel to portray instead the generation that came after the height of the AIDS crisis, addressing the life of a young gay man in New York.

[23] The play opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in November 2019 and in March 2020 closed a few days earlier than announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[24][25] A British television adaptation of the novel in the BBC's Play of the Month series was broadcast in 1970, and starred Leo Genn, Sarah-Jane Gwillim, and Glenda Jackson.

[26][27] A film version made in 1992 stars Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Hopkins, and Samuel West.

[28] In 1949, an adaptation by Horton Heath aired on NBC University Theatre, with Alma Lawton as Margaret Schlegel, Eileen Erskine as Helen Schlegel, Tom Dillon as Henry Wilcox, Ben Wright as Charles Wilcox, Terry Kilburn as Leonard Bast, and Queenie Leonard as Jacky Bast.

[31] The adaptation is discussed in Stevens' article "Page to Stage: A New Opera, Howards End, America" in the Polish Journal of English Studies.